Regenerative Justice

Kirby is a Lived Experience Peer Mentor. After a traumatic childhood and eighteen years under the Guardianship of the Minister for Community Welfare (GOM), Kirby enlisted into the Australian Army in 2002 as an Infantry Soldier for four years. After struggling with reintegration into civilian life post-service, Kirby became intrinsically involved in criminality. After nearly ten years in custody, Kirby founded Arcofyre in 2017, a lived experience social enterprise focused on training, employment, advocacy and peer mentoring. Kirby also regularly conducts critical outreach for vulnerable members of the Adelaide community who have had contact with the criminal justice system. He is passionate about seeing people lead pro-social lives post-release and becoming self-sustaining members of the community. He currently studying an Advanced Certificate of Offender Rehabilitation.

Tina (she/her) has lived experience of years of incarceration and invasive state surveillance as a carceral citizen. She will not be “free” from the parole system until the end of 2022. She is also nearing the end of her Honours degree where she is conceptualising, through auto-ethnography, the collateral consequence of conviction in South Australia. Through her experience of being both student and subject of criminology, Tina has started to question the safety of South Australian universities for people with lived prison experience. The solidarity of carceral citizenship motivates her activism and story-telling, as does the struggle to see person-first language replace harmful system labels when referring to people like herself.

Growing up in a small country town, James (he/him) found himself couching surfing at the age of 13. It was around this time he had his first of many encounters with the police and justice system, which continued into adulthood. After being found guilty of a serious offence, James vowed to change his life. Knowing this would not be possible in his hometown, James moved to Adelaide and worked to build a life he and his family could be proud of. Since then, James has worked in residential and secure care, hoping to give other young people the opportunity to realise their potential and find the strength to move towards it.

After discovering the inequities and issues surround our punitive criminal justice system, Amy embarked on a 15-year plus association with the South Australian Department for Correctional Services, first as a volunteer and more recently running programs for women in Adelaide Women's Prison to build skills, confidence and networks to support a more successful transition back into community. Amy is passionate about raising awareness of the broad systemic issues that suround our criminal justice system which perpetuate crime and criminal behaviour, and encourages us all as individuals to take responsibility for the role that we can, and must, play in building a more regenerative justice system.

Sarah is renowned for her leadership in the social enterprise and social business sector, and for cultivating ecosystems for socially and environmentally sustainable businesses in South Australia. Sarah is Founder and CEO of GOGO Events and the GOGO Foundation, and Co-Founder of Collab4Good. Sarah is also a Westpac Social Change Fellow, a SheEO Venture and Activator, and an SA Woman of the Year.

Lisa has a background in Women's Studies and Social Work, and a long-standing passion and commitment to redressing injustice and discrimination across all sectors of the community. She has both professional and lived experience dealing with homelessness and addiction, and in recent years has been involved in delivering the Life Skills Program and one on one Professional Mentoring Sessions at the Adelaide Women's Prison.